Denmark Street, in London's
West End, contains a series
of terraced houses dating to
the late seventeenth century. In the
nineteenth century, the street was
notorious for poverty and prostitution,
and by the twentieth, it had become a
hub for musicians, music shops, and live
venues. The Rolling Stones and David
Bowie have histories there, and Steve
Jones, founding guitarist of the seminal
punk band The Sex Pistols, squatted
at 6 Denmark Street, once home to
a silversmith.
Archaeologists
interested in the history
of antiestablishment,
working-class punk music
and culture have documented
drawings on walls
there by Sex Pistols member
John Lydon (a.k.a.
Johnny Rotten) in the
1970s—profane graffiti
and caricatures of himself
(right), Jones, band manager
Malcolm McClaren
(left), bassist and singer
Sid Vicious, and others. The cartoons
and graffiti are representative of early
punk in their rude, rebellious themes and
could also represent a move by Rotten
to take control of the band, of which he
was not an original member. "This very
archaeological record offers something
visceral and immediate, generatingt
unique insight," wrote
independent archaeologist
Paul Graves-Brown and
the University of York's
John Schofield in their
paper about the site in
the journal Antiquity. "We
could sense their presence
as unruly ghosts,
lounging on the sofas
and writing on the walls,"
though not all of them are
dead just yet.